Heartbeat is a long running
British TV police drama series set in 1960s
Yorkshire. It is made by
ITV Studios (formerly
Yorkshire Television["TV recruits rogue to rival Greengrass", Telegraph, 19 June 2001]) at
The Leeds Studios, and on location, for broadcast on
ITV.
Heartbeat first aired on Friday 10 April 1992 (it was later shifted to Sunday evenings). By autumn 2008, it had reached its 18th series, clocking up over 370 episodes.
Heartbeat has proved popular since the beginning when early series consistently drew over 10 million viewers.
[Niamh Cusack - TV.com website] In its first year
Heartbeat averaged 14.5 million viewers and was regularly in the top five TV programmes across all British channels. It has even scored higher figures than soap opera
Coronation Street (one of Britain's best known and most popular TV shows). In 2001
Heartbeat came sixth in the UK TV ratings list with a peak audience of 13.82 million
[2001 TV ratings] and was sixth again in 2003 with 12.8 million viewers.
[2003 TV ratings] In autumn 2008 typical viewing figures were around 6 million per episode.
[BARB]
It stars
Steven Blakeley,
Joe McFadden,
John Duttine, Rupert Ward-Lewis,
Derek Fowlds,
William Simons,
Lisa Kay,
Tricia Penrose and
Gwen Taylor alongside
Peter Benson,
David Lonsdale, and
Clare Wille.
